–Fed Tapering:Tim Duy examines whether the Fed will reduce bond purchases in September. “The Federal Reserve is having a difficult time convincing market participants that quantitative easing and interest rates represent two separate policy tools. They want to severe the perception that the two are connected – a reduction in the pace of asset purchases thus does not signal a change in the expected lift-off from the zero bound. Understanding that the two policies are different is, I think, key to understanding why the Fed is heading toward a September tapering despite what many view as an overall subpar economic environment.”

–Oil:Laurel Graefe and Rebekah Durham of the Atlanta Fed talk about oil. “However, the two seemingly opposing narratives—that of high oil prices and that of an emerging oil and gas abundance—are fundamentally linked. In fact, if it hadn’t been for such high oil prices, this new surge in North American oil production may not have happened. It is much more difficult to rationalize drilling activity in deep offshore areas, hard shale, or tar sands—from which, by nature, oil is expensive to produce—without high oil prices. (West Texas Intermediate, or WTI, oil averaged $31 per barrel in 2003, which, even in real terms, is only about 2/5 of today’s prices.) Analysts at Morgan Stanley estimate that the break-even point for Bakken (North Dakota) crude oil is about $70 per barrel and that even a price of $85 per barrel could squeeze out many of the unconventional producers. What does all this mean for prices? Well, keep in mind that oil is a global commodity. So the roughly two million barrels of oil per day that have entered the market from the U.S. fracking boom represent a big shift domestically but only just over 2 percent of global oil consumption.”

–Recession and Depression:Justin Fox charts the difference in the job market during the Great Depression and Great Recession. “What lessons can one draw from this? Basically, if you think this downturn was comparable in origin and inherent severity to the other recessions since World War II, then we’ve been the victims of economic-policy bungling of epic proportions. If, on the other hand, you think the proper comparison is the Great Depression, the last U.S. downturn brought on by a severe financial crisis, you’d have to say the White House, Congress, and most of all the Federal Reserve have done an absolutely brilliant job relative to their early-1930s counterparts. I’d lean toward explanation No. 2 — we did actually learn something from the Great Depression, although probably not enough.”

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